By: Zoocasa

The City of Toronto appears to simply be getting too expensive for prospective buyers. The Toronto Real Estate Board released its August report detailing MLS data and the state of the housing market recently and the figures are astonishing. Sold house prices in Toronto rose 0.3 year over year to $1,246,392 — but that doesn’t tell the full story. In the city centre itself – the area that includes houses for sale in North York to Union station, covering Lawrence Park, Rosedale, the Annex, Yorkville, Rathnelly, and the Village (roughly the area’s corresponding to the yellow U-shaped subway line) – single-family homes are actually closer to $2 million. And that’s just the average price of houses, meaning that a family looking for anything more than a knock-down bungalow, or something with more than three bedrooms could easily be looking at $3-$4 million.

That may be why sales are up just 8.8% for detached houses in the city, compared to 24.5% in the 905. 

Homes in the 905 are far more reasonably priced, albeit still expensive compared to the rest of Canada, east of Vancouver. The average price of single-family homes remain under $1 million, at $978,920. But you can still find detached houses across the 905 for $558,333 (Georgina), $554,891 (Oshawa), $774,928 (Whitby), $597,988 (Innisfil) and $712,425 (Ajax).

The high prices of detached properties may also be why so many Toronto residents are flocking to high-density living. Unlike detached homes, condo units have shown considerable price growth, rising 5.7% year over year to $619,307. Is that Toronto residents prefer the maintenance-free style of living, or is it that they simply can’t afford to buy land on the ground? The answer remains unknown.

TREB expects market conditions to only get worse, with prices rising due to a lack of supply. 

“Market conditions also became tighter in August 2019 compared to a year ago because, while sales were up year over year, new listings were down by three per cent over the same time period to 11,789. Year-to-date, growth in sales has well outstripped growth in new listings. This is why overall active listings counted at the end of August were down by more than 11 per cent compared to August 2018,” TREB says. 

We’ll have to wait and see to determine if TREB’s predictions are correct.. If they are, the question remains, just how high can Toronto’s single-family homes go?

To see more data on Toronto’s housing market, check out the infographic below:

Zoocasa.com is a real estate company that combines online search tools and a full-service brokerage to empower Canadians to buy or sell their homes faster, easier and more successfully. Home buyers can browse homes across Canada on the website or the free iOS app

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Writer: Danielle Kubes